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02 September 2005

What's your neighborhood's story? Every neighborhood has stories. Secrets. Things you have to live there to know. [More:]Some of mine:

1. There is a small table in the corner of my laundry room that serves as a sort of dumping/ground thrift store. Whenever a resident has something they'd like to get rid of it goes on to the table and it's first come, first served. Usually it's junk like the cord from an electric blanket that couldn't have been manufactured any later than 1972 or a stained crocheted ladies' bonnet, but occasionally there is some good stuff to be found. I once got my hands on a big collection of old cookbooks and just today I found a big plastic bag filled with colored glass pebbles. (I like stones and pebbles and rocks of all sorts.)

In return I have donated the 1984 World book Encyclopedia (both volumes), one old but well-seasoned softball mitt and a shoebox of old CDs.

2. There is a small footpath on the farside of the apartment building that leads through the woods to the next neighborhood over. Halfway down the path just off the side is a HUGE flat tree stump that makes a perfect reading spot when the weather is nice.

3. There is a big swath of wildflowers growing along one side of the back fence. Very few people know about it because you have to take a path behind the dumpsters to get there. But it's a great spot to pick wildflowers for decorating.

4. There is a grocery store that sells lotto next to my complex. People buy scratch-offs and discard them along the sidewalk that runs between the two buildings. I walk my dog there and always check the discarded scratch-offs because people are impatient and occasionally fail to scratch off every spot. I've won a fair amount of pocket change on those things.

What are some of yours? (I apologize if this is too much of a GYOBF sort of post but I needed a distraction and the pebble find in the basement got me thinking about neighborhoods and the little secrets they hold.)
The street had and an "L" shape with two different streets meeting at the 90-degree angle of the “L”. Brenner Ave was a WASP street & Melrose Lane was low-income Cracker Jack box homes. Grew up seeing every facet of a neighborhood there.
posted by thomcatspike 02 September | 19:20
1984 World book Encyclopedia

Er, that would be the 1984 World Book Encyclopedia dictionary. But it was both volumes!
posted by LeeJay 02 September | 19:28
There are a ton of tunnels under my neighborhood. Originally they were used to hide people and help move them into Canada on the Underground Railroad.
Later on they were used to move alcohol in from Canada during prohibition.
posted by kellydamnit 02 September | 19:44
Everyone in my neighborhood is white (myself included) and Mormon (except me).

You now know all you need to know in order to exist here.
posted by mr_crash_davis 02 September | 20:59
kellydamnit, that is so cool.

A 2 mile or so canal winds through my island, crossed with 5 little Japanese bridges and it's even lit at night... it's meant for walking and even has a bike path and teeny beaches and beautiful plants and all sorts of things, but if you didn't live here you'd never know. Shhhhhh.....
posted by puddinghead 03 September | 03:07
Everyone sees the observatory on their way down the hill to work, but fewer know that the foundationless building is held down by tons of loose stone in the basement. Or that there used to be this crazy castle-like manor on the hill.

Every once in a while, I look around and imagine the hill when the whole place was a pasture, and the whole city was built around trains, not cars.

I still haven't figured out the story behind the old, decrepit synagogue and it's massive trees. One day...
posted by selfnoise 03 September | 15:04
United Negro College Fund || Some songs of Richard Thompson

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